e, unfortunately thrown down, and
{23} run over by several horses, by which he was so miserably bruised
that he expired next day; and on Friday the stand, which was erected
for the nobility, ladies and gentry, being overcrowded with spectators,
suddenly broke down, but luckily none of the company received any
damage. An old woman, however, who got underneath the stand to avoid
the crowd, was so much hurt that she died.

In September, 1766, at these races we read that "never was finer sport
seen," and that there was, as now, a good deal of betting connected
with race meetings, seems evident from the hint that the result of the
race was such that "the knowing ones were pretty deeply taken in."

The old Odsey Races only came once a year, in September, and other
sports were required to meet the popular taste. Cricket had hardly
taken practical shape, but representative contests did take place in
the favourite pastime of cock-fighting--or "cocking" as it was always
called in the last century--in which contests the Hertfordshire side of
the town brought its birds into the pit against those of the
Cambridgeshire side. Of this the following is a specimen under date
1767:--

"On Monday next at the Old Crown, and on Tuesday at the Talbot Inns, in
Royston, will be fought a main of cocks between gentlemen of
Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire; fourteen cocks on each side for two
guineas a battle, and ten the odd. Ten byes for each guinea."

The Red Lion also had its "assemblies and cookings as usual," on the
day of Odsey Races, from which it appears that the patrons of the races
finished up with cock fights at the inns in the town. Indeed it would
be impossible to understand the social life of the period without
taking into account the universal popularity of cock-fighting. Often
the stakes took the form of a fat hog or a fat ox, and the
technicalities of the sport read something like this:--"No one cock to
exceed the weight of 4 pounds, 10 ounces, when fairly brought to scale;
to fight in fair repute, silver weapons, and fair main hackles." On
one occasion in the year 1800 a main of cocks was fought at Newmarket
for 1,000 guineas a side, and 40 guineas for each battle, when there
was "a great deal of betting."

Another form of sport was that of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday.
Badger-baiting continued in Royston occasionally till the first decade
of the present century, and was sometimes a popular sport at the
small